On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 08:42:03 -0700, John Ames wrote:

To cite one convenient example, the designers clearly have no idea what
the point is of keyboard accelerators in menus & dialogs; they'll often assign the same accelerator key to multiple controls on the same
window ...

I fired up GIMP 3 and had a quick look round at several dialogs. I simply
could not find any examples of what you’re talking about.

(I'd also cite, as another example, that they have no idea what the
point of context menus is, either - right-clicking in the document
window brings up a *whole entire copy* of the main-window menu tree
hanging off the mouse pointer, which is utterly bonkers from a usability standpoint ...

It does still take advantage of Fitts’ Law though, doesn’t it. Is there some other point to context menus?

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On Wed, 4 Jun 2025 08:48:26 -0700, John Ames wrote:

On Wed, 4 Jun 2025 00:15:36 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

I fired up GIMP 3 and had a quick look round at several dialogs. I
simply could not find any examples of what you’re talking about.

I'll be damned - looks like they *finally* started paying attention to
this in v.3. Only took 'em 27 years!

*Yawn* Or more likely, you took one look at an early version of GIMP 27
years ago, dismissed it, and have been complaining about it without
actually trying it again ever since.

Fitts' Law is exactly what makes such a thing comically redundant: the
main menu is *already there,* right within mouse-flick range.

Only if it’s on the edge of the screen. Otherwise it is slow to get to.

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On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 08:45:47 -0700, John Ames wrote:

... but it's illustrative of the GIMP team's overall approach to UI
matters: blindly copy what better designers do in a surface
approximation, without bothering to understand *why* or study the
details to get things really *right.*

You’re assuming that the ones who come up with the ideas are actually
doing user-interface testing. You really think Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and others are doing that nowadays?

When you’re saying “get things right” you just mean “get things the way I’m used to with Adobe products”. Or maybe it’s “Microsoft” or “Apple”
products in some other case.

Same can be seen with single-window mode, which came about as a response
to Photoshop for Windows offering a multiple-document interface, but
took a less-useful-but-easier-to-implement approach.

Not sure what you’re complaining about there. GIMP still offers the choice
of multi-window mode, if that’s what you prefer.

...which is why working professionals just trying to Get Shit Done
are still willing to put up with Adobe's draconian bullshit.

I just think sometimes those “working professionals” are too lazy or unimaginative to realize that a computer is a universal machine, that you
can program to do all the boring, repetitive tasks for you, so you don’t
have to do them.

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On 6/4/25 7:14 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 4 Jun 2025 08:48:26 -0700, John Ames wrote:

On Wed, 4 Jun 2025 00:15:36 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

I fired up GIMP 3 and had a quick look round at several dialogs. I
simply could not find any examples of what you’re talking about.

I'll be damned - looks like they *finally* started paying attention to
this in v.3. Only took 'em 27 years!

*Yawn* Or more likely, you took one look at an early version of GIMP 27
years ago, dismissed it, and have been complaining about it without
actually trying it again ever since.

Look, it's FREEware .... don't bitch. GIMP
is a 'labor of love'.

Fitts' Law is exactly what makes such a thing comically redundant: the
main menu is *already there,* right within mouse-flick range.

Only if it’s on the edge of the screen. Otherwise it is slow to get to.

On the whole, I think PhotoShop is a speck better
and easier to navigate. However it's also $$$ and
only runs on the most money-grubbing control-freak
operating systems.

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On 2025-06-05, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 08:45:47 -0700, John Ames wrote:

... but it's illustrative of the GIMP team's overall approach to UI
matters: blindly copy what better designers do in a surface
approximation, without bothering to understand *why* or study the
details to get things really *right.*

You’re assuming that the ones who come up with the ideas are actually
doing user-interface testing. You really think Adobe, Apple, Microsoft
and others are doing that nowadays?

Certainly - but only as far as getting users to say, "Ooooh, shiny!"
Once they've accomplished that, they're done; sales are assured.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

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On Fri, 6 Jun 2025 08:32:02 -0700, John Ames wrote:

There is, AFAICT, still no way to view documents side-by- side in
SWM, despite GIMP's own internal dev wiki admitting that this is a
real need ...

So do it in multi-window mode.

Remember that Microsoft’s whole MDI/SDI rigmarole is a consequence of the brain-dead architecture of the Windows GUI in the first place. There is no reason for an application that runs on *nix systems to be restricted to
the same limitations.

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On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 15:34:29 -0700, John Ames wrote:

MDI is one of several solutions to an inherently clunky and complicated
UX problem: how do you manage a single application with arbitrarily many documents, in a desktop environment with a bunch of other stuff open as
well?

We already have plenty of solutions to that. Look at the dual concepts of “virtual desktops” and “activities” in KDE Plasma 6.x, for example. That
allows you to switch between entire suites of document/application windows
in a single operation.

MDI is inherently clunky because Microsoft chose to impose the stupid UI convention that there must be a top-level “application window” to contain all the application-specific “document windows”. No other GUI is built
that way.

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Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 15:34:29 -0700, John Ames wrote:

MDI is one of several solutions to an inherently clunky and complicated
UX problem: how do you manage a single application with arbitrarily many
documents, in a desktop environment with a bunch of other stuff open as
well?

We already have plenty of solutions to that. Look at the dual concepts of >“virtual desktops” and “activities” in KDE Plasma 6.x, for example. That
allows you to switch between entire suites of document/application windows
in a single operation.

That is something I have never understood, and have failed to find
example use cases: All documentation I found handles this feature in
half a paragraph, leaving it to the user to grasp the possible power
of the two-dimensional concept.

MDI is inherently clunky because Microsoft chose to impose the stupid UI >convention that there must be a top-level “application window” to contain >all the application-specific “document windows”. No other GUI is built >that way.

They did that 30 years ago and did pioneering work in this regard,
just to reduce the blame we put on them today.

Greetings
Marc
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Rhein-Neckar, DE | Beginning of Wisdom " |
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 6224 1600402

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